Did you have a breakdown in grad school?

Nah I’m well adjusted. I actually worked a real job in my life and grad school...even at its most challenging...is a cushy, privileged lifestyle that affords unreasonable amounts of freedom that can’t be found anywhere else. Graduate students that have breakdowns are 100% of the time responsible for their own wimpy psychological problems.

only my first semester, nasty prof sent me an email saying she wasn't sure I was cut out for grad school and I spent 3 days in bed only getting up to pee and stuff my face with candy before going back to bed. Turns out after I embarrassingly told someone this a year later that she had a reputation for sending nastygrams and thought that motivated people somehow.

I experienced passive suicidal thoughts for a while, i.e. 'well, maybe it would be great if I got hit by a bus because otherwise I will be known as a failure to everyone.' So not quite a breakdown, but more of a slow motions of serious mental health issues which led me to therapy and medication that I needed.

Yeah, because I'm really passionate about my work. Grad school can beat you down. At my previous 9-to-5 jobs, it wasn't an issue. But when you love your work, and you hope it's for the betterment of some people or "society," it can be arduous to deal with the negativity and stress. That may just be me, though.

"Graduate students that have breakdowns are 100% of the time responsible for their own wimpy psychological problems."

This is true. Just like poor are 100% of the time responsible for their poverty because they are too lazy to get marketable skill and alcoholics/drug addicts are 100% of the time responsible for their addiction because they ware weak people.

>"...then you need to gtfo of sociology, because we're already over-run with you nutcases. Your "work" is not that important."

You seem to be making assumptions about who these people are. I won't give my work away, but I can guarantee it's not who you think. My work is hardly activist. Doing research for social benefit is better than for corporate interests, or for personal tenure/job placement. My work isn't that important, no. But I guess that's a sacrifice for making it important to some people rather than trying to fix society in one go.

“This is true. Just like poor are 100% of the time responsible for their poverty because they are too lazy to get marketable skill and alcoholics/drug addicts are 100% of the time responsible for their addiction because they ware weak people.”

You see, your feeble reading skills have already demonstrated a sincere incapacity for graduate work anyway. Unlike your hyperbolic examples, there is no structural problem related to preventing people who are unhappy in grad school from leaving. If you honestly think that people who can’t handle the stress of working on projects they enjoy and discussing ideas for a living are the same as people living in poverty you are a trash sociologist and I would expect you to have problems 100% related to your own wimpy mind.

I believed, for about 6 months, that I needed to start my dissertation over - in a new field too. Everything else in my life was actually going very well, and I was otherwise emotionally stable, so I didn’t see the red flags. I applied for fellowships and submitted conference proposals under this new framework. The good news was that it didn’t take very long to finish the (first) dissertation once I finally saw the light - but I didn’t get any of the funding I applied for, or any of my top picks for ASA. Lesson learned!